The news of the separation came just one week after the former Vice President and his wife announced that they were seeking an amicable divorce after 40 years of what had always been described as an ideal marriage. People Magazine broke the story Wednesday. Karenna Gore Schiff, 36, is the oldest of four Gore children. An author and lawyer, she has been working on a documentary about inspirational women. She and her husband have three children: Wyatt, 10; Anna, 8; and Oscar, 3.

‘Amicable’ separationAccording to PEOPLE, the break-up is by mutual agreement while the couple attempt to patch things up.

“It's amicable and they are in counseling. They are not divorced,” People quoted an anonymous friend of the couple as saying. Another anonymous friend said the separation took place “a couple of months ago.”

Both Al, 62, and Tipper, 61, have visited their daughter in New York since the separation, according to reports. Al Gore is now in the Philippines, where he is to speak at a climate-change convention. Published reports say he is still wearing his wedding ring.

The Gores shocked Washington insiders when they announced on June 1 that they were ending their marriage. The couple had fallen in love in high school and still seemed to be passionately in love.But the former Vice President and his wife had been growing apart, People’s Washington correspondent Sandra Sobieraj Westfall, told TODAY’s Meredith Vieira on June 2.

“The two of them have been living incredibly separate lives — their separate schedules took them in different directions,” Westfall told Vieira. “They said they had just grown apart. Tipper loved life and wanted to have fun, and Al remained a very driven man with a lot of projects and irons in the fire.”

The winner of a Nobel Peace Prize and an Oscar for his 2007 documentary about climate change, “An Inconvenient Truth,” Al Gore did not actually invent the Internet, but he is on the board of Apple and is an advisor to Google.

Tipper had been spending her time following her passion for photography and visiting their four children and three grandchildren.

“We are announcing today that after a great deal of thought we have decided to separate. This is very much a mutual and mutually supportive decision that we have made together, following a process of long and careful consideration,” Al and Tipper Gore said in the joint statement announcing their separation.

Karenna Gore Schiff’s husband, Drew Schiff, 44, is a medical doctor who works for Aisling, a company that invests in biotechnology projects. He is a direct descendent of the famous banker and philanthropist Jacob Schiff, who died in 1920.